Game Designing is a Long Process blog - jrjellybeans

So, we're about a month or so past our deadline :(

Just like last time, waiting for the art has cost us a bit of time, though we've been wrapping up the finishing code slowly. But, everything is coming together nicely. Hopefully, the artist will complete everything by this weekend. In her defense, we've asked her to redo several images.

We're playing through The Good Apprentice and we can't help but realize how dull it is. Maybe not exactly dull, more like REALLY repetitive. This may shock you to hear us say this, but we pretty much planned it this way :)

We intentially kept the design pretty basic because we didn't want to make the same mistake as last time and end up blowing away a bunch of money. We're getting the art done on this game for less than 1000 dollars! That's nothing when you compare it to a lot of other independent games out there. Unfortunately, with a low price, we get low quality. The two problems that we feel stick out in the game right now are:

1. the lack of difference in enemies. We did that dumb affect where higher level enemies are a different color than their weaker couterparts... meh...
2. the sprites in the story are... interesting. Some of the backgrounds are a little messed up and we're hoping that our customer will be able to overlook that.

If you're just starting to read this blog, then you may not know that we value story telling in games. It's one of our favorite things about video games! The Cherokee Indian had a great story, The Good Apprentice has a great story - we make great games with great stories (we think).

But, making those great stories increases our costs... sometimes significantly. We hope that The Good Apprentice turns out well financially not just because we like money (heh heh), but because we won't be able to make the make the great games WITH the great storylines that we love to make. If anything would have to go, it's the story and that would be a shame for us...

Well, it's just what we've been thinking of lately. Anyways, hopefully, the art is finished by the weekend and we can release this damn thing. One way or the other, it's been a helluva a lot of work (fun work, however).

Any comments or questions are appreciated!